GT

Sunday, 12 May 2013

Individual Post 4: Theme

Identity is defined by choices, but you can change the amount that they change your identity.

I chose this as my theme statement because this book is all about choices. El Patrón having clones for his brothers and sisters lives. Choice. Tam Lin deciding to confide and look out for Matt. Choice. Celia treating Matt like a son. Choice. SO many aspects of the book revolve around choices. In the end though, Matt could almost choose how he reacted and how his identity changed through those choices. For instance, he decided not, in the end to let Steven and Emilia's neutral-hostility to him change him. He let María's feelings for him and his for her change him. He let Tam Lin become a fatherly figure to him, and reached a point where he loved him.

Identity is another part of my theme statement, and I really can say that it's a large part of the novel. You build this picture of the feelings and try to guess at the reason for certain choices each character made. The best spot to look at that kind of thing is in roundtables. But identity remains a large part of most stories, and in many, the identity of the characters changes. Sometimes it is fast, as the novel takes place over long periods of time, but sometimes it is over a short period, and the change is slower paced. Defining is also a fairly large part of the novel, from actually defining the law to looking at major aspects of the characters and saying, "oh, he is a very rude boy who cares only for his selfish wants (Tom)."

"The aristocrat is only a snot-faced boy who thinks he's too good for the rest of us..." (Farmer 287)

"Oh, you were a clone. There's no
mistake about that. But we're talking international law now." (Farmer 366)

"It means you really are El Patrón. You
have his his body and his identity. You own everything he owned and rule
everything he ruled..." (Farmer 367)

Matt suddenly felt light-headed. She was right. He was El Patrón's clone. His fingerprints would be the same, his DNA identical. "If you're wrong," he told María, we'll die." (Farmer 222) (Here is where Matt chooses to try his luck with the El Patrón-only fingerprint/DNA scanner)